Category Archives: post adoption

one year later: adoption faqs, part two

Posted on by August 22, 2013

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A year ago we were in Spaghettia, in 90-degree heat, in the middle of the first week of living with Andrey and Reagan. It was their first week of living with us, with a family, outside the orphanages they grew up in. On this day one year ago I wrote a post that was in Q&A format, but it was mostly just me saying “I don’t know” to a bunch of questions that we all had at that time. At least we knew that we didn’t know very much.

We also knew pretty quickly that we missed the honeymoon stage with them, unless the two-hour car ride from the orphanages to Sofia counts.

(It doesn’t.)

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We know a little more now than we did then. We are still learning so much, all the time. In many ways we feel light years ahead of where we were a year ago, and in other ways, we feel…discouraged. Just being honest.

So, a year later, I have an armful of questions that some of you have asked and I think I have better answers than I did before. Not necessarily happier answers, but more informed answers, and they all pretty much revolve around this issue of attachment. I’ll start with the easiest ones first.

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Question #1: What are their favorite foods?

Answer: Pretty much everything. Andrey loves pizza and will overeat to the point of throwing up (true story). Reagan refused several foods at first but has finally come to terms with chicken and eggs and will now eat anything, including food off someone else’s plate or crumbs from the floor. We keep the cat food out of reach.

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Question #2: How are their English skills?

Answer: Really great. Andrey picked up English within the first few months and can speak it very well (though often with a thick accent and grammatically incorrect tenses and such). Reagan can understand it but her speech is still very toddler-ish and garbled. That’s the quick answer. However…

Much of the garbling/poor pronunciation from both of them is intentional. There are many things that we know they can say very clearly but they will often intentionally refuse to say it clearly so that you’ll ask them to repeat themselves. In the same vein, they will also often say “What?” when you speak to them – not because they didn’t hear you, but because they want you to repeat yourself. This is an attachment issue; it is a way for them to try to be in control and also command your attention for longer.

It is also incredibly irritating. (smile)

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Question #3: What attachment issues do you face and what are you doing to remedy them?

And also,

Questions #4-5: What has been the hardest adjustment for you and Vince as parents? What has been the hardest adjustment for the kids?

Nevermind. Let’s just skip those.

Kidding. But also…(you guys just don’t let up, do you?)

Question #6: How are you finding healing and redemption through the hard times?

Um. Chocolate.

And one more, a question we are constantly asking ourselves…

Question #7: When can you come over and play?

I’ve sat here just staring at these questions and I’m not really sure about the best way to answer them. There is living in a fishbowl, and then there is displaying your scars. One speaks of current issues, exposure, and sometimes murky water; the other is survival, victory, and triumph. Both can be ugly, but one bears the comfort and softening that time brings.

There are things I want to tell you that can’t be said in the clear water of a fishbowl yet, so we wait for scar tissue to form before we can show them.

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I started writing a post on attachment a couple of months ago, and it’s turned into 3000 words and counting of something I didn’t expect. I’ll be posting it (or parts of it) as a series soon. So without repeating myself too much from the posts in the past or that post to come, let me just say that the biggest thing we are doing is trying to like them.

Because – can we be for real? – it’s not easy to like children that are used to manipulating and lying for survival. It’s very hard to believe the best in children who have learned to be sneaky, false, and deceptive as though their very lives depended on it. The farther we get into this, the more we have learned about behaviors that we did not pick up on even six months ago…and we fight a feeling of continual distrust and jaded skepticism toward them that doesn’t feel healthy.

We want to believe the best. We pray it for them all the time. But we would be utterly foolish and irresponsible to give either Andrey or Reagan the benefit of the doubt on issues of safety, trust, or boundaries.

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Andrey and Reagan are learning to trust us, and to some extent, we can tell that we are making progress because they are fighting tooth and nail against it. Against us. They are used to temporary, perfunctory relationships with caregivers and superficial, shallow interaction. This is why they seem to thrive around strangers, acquaintances, and public settings, because the cursory exchange happening on the surface with strangers and acquaintances is all they’ve ever known and it is comfortable for them…like a warm, stinky, full diaper – and equally therapeutic.

Many people still don’t understand the boundaries that Andrey and Reagan need, and we are still learning to communicate their needs and boundaries to others. And, for crying out loud, people are just so nice – which is wonderful – but it turns kiddos with attachment issues into unrecognizable creatures after they get back home, like gremlins who’ve been fed after midnight. This is why we avoid many public settings, and I don’t take the kids anywhere on my own yet…even my closest friends’ homes…because there’s just too much to watch for.

(Partly, this is just me. Vince will take all six kids to Target because he’s a thrill seeker. In contrast, I am a homebody who gets the shakes if I have to be in Walmart for more than an hour, with or without kids.)

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Our persistent intimacy in their lives pushes them out of their comfort zone. Often, they would much rather smile at strangers at the store than hold my hand or answer me when I speak to them. Frequently – almost every Sunday, still – they would rather stare at acquaintances than hold eye contact with their parents. We are here for them, for good, forever, and the nasty unhealthy diaper is coming off, however slowly. They fight and kick like a baby who doesn’t want to be changed.

It’s only partly an analogy. I’ll avoid the gory details and suffice it to say that sometimes they purposefully try to be repulsive so as to…repulse us. To push us away.

They need us to like them, though. Just as His kindness leads us to repentance, our favor over them brings out goodness that has been buried. Love isn’t the issue – we know that love is a verb, and we are choosing to love, to clean, to discipline, to smile, to supervise, to hold, to praise, even when we don’t want to.

The real battle is heart-deep, in theirs and ours. Feelings can’t be trusted, but they do matter. It is winning the battle to like them, to enjoy them, to see the beautiful…that makes or breaks us at the end of every day.

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always with me, everywhere

Posted on by August 21, 2013
Next week marks a significant 12-month victory in our family. A year ago, we risked the ocean and stormed two castles and brought two children out of captivity and into a family. For good, forever.

It sounds nice. Victorious, glorious.

But it has been hard, and we’ve been learning to abide in ways we never thought to before. In the midst of other life happenings (because drama never has the courtesy to make an appointment), we have walked many places this year that we honestly did not want to go. We still walk to some of those places every week. Usually, every day…often, more than once.

It’s a grisly battle and there’s nothing romantic or pretty about it.

There have been mornings that I don’t want to leave the bedroom. There are chaotic afternoons that taunt and harass with the voice of the enemy saying, “I told you so.” There are middle-of-the-nights that I fight bloody hell for joy and peace.

It is hardest when I forget that He’s right there in those hard places with us. Sometimes I forget to see the beautiful, I forget that He makes quiet resting places in the chaos, and I forget that He’s holding the needle.

 

But He reminds me over and over and over. He’s always with me. This verse has been taped to our shower wall in a plastic sheet protector for the past several months:

 

You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You.

– Isaiah 26:3

 

 

In the wee hours one morning recently, I gave up trying to get back to sleep. I was tired, but tired of trying, too.
 
We’d been fighting illness and there were eight loads of laundry in queue. I thought I’d get some of it done in a quiet house, drink a glass of water, and go back to bed in an hour or so once I was tired enough to fall back asleep.

 

Tiptoed downstairs. Two cats, one striped and one solid, came padding behind me.

 

 

One of them in particular follows me everywhere, every day. White as a cue ball, she’s everywhere I go.

 

Where can I go from my Sophie? Or where can I flee from her presence? If ascend up the stairs, she is there. If I make my bed in the morning, she is climbing all over the pillows. If I take the wash out of the dryer, behold, she is there. If I hide in the remotest part of the house, even there she will follow me, her right paw will lay hold of the sandwich I am trying to eat for lunch.

– Psalm 139:7-10, modified considerably 

 

 

 

The girl knows what it is to abide, to pursue the presence of the one she loves. To follow the person who loves her best. She loves to be with me, and I love that, too – though sometimes I’d like to keep my bowl of ice cream to myself.

 

 

Despite my grand intentions, the laundry in the dryer was still damp. I set it to running again, wondering what to do. Fold a few blankets. Wipe the counter. Tell the cats to be quiet because it’s not breakfast time yet…in this house, at least.

 

 I looked for my Bible but couldn’t find it. I remembered that it was by the bed, but didn’t want to risk waking up small humans by going back upstairs to get it. 
I grab another book instead, and read this:

 

The Spirit must break our practice of the presence of self, and He does this by forging Himself into our inner being. How often these last years have I been filled with that burning? There were times when I literally felt as though He grabbed my soul with His holy fist and lifted me up before His face with my feet dangling in midair and my tongue protesting, “No, Lord, I can’t take anymore. No more, Lord. I’m weary of the painful growth.”

 

And I realize that the laundry was just a ruse to get me down here to read this, today, this morning, right now. Because I need more of Him urgently.

 

I am learning about those flames which burn but do not consume. I am learning about that fire which releases the odor and fragrance of roses and about that Guest who inhabits the parlor of our souls, who banks the fireplace with ashes to keep the burning low or who uses the billows when the room has grown cold.

– Karen Burton Mains, Open Heart, Open Home

 

 

I check the laundry. Pull out dry things that are wadded around damp towels and reset the dryer. Fold a pillowcase and some underwear, a set of sheets. It is the Sabbath without rest right now – Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and we need healing. But it is quiet and the spirit is resting even when the body isn’t.

 

Sophie is here, quietly accepting the wait for breakfast, though Gus still loiters in the kitchen. It is just me and them and Him and the laundry, breathing in peace and fellowship. It is the day of Communion.

 

The towels are dry and another load goes in. I finish folding warm clothes in a cold room, in bare feet on a hard floor. Put away my empty glass. Stack sheets and towels and underwear, triumphant over another load of laundry, and head upstairs, two little cats following me.

 

He has used His billows to relight the fire, and He banks me in with a down comforter. Victorious, glorious.

 

Contentedly exhausted, I go back to sleep…and He is right there in that place, too.

 

anxious for nothing

Posted on by August 31, 2013

 
I love bread dough. There is something instinctively comforting about warm, rising dough that is as fluffy as toddler cheeks. I love the ppfffffff sound of punching the dough down after the first rise and then dividing it into little loaf portions and tucking them into their pans.  I love folding in mozzarella and sauteed onions and so many herbs that they fall out when you lift the dough into the big loaf pan.

I love watching it rise.
 
And…I really love eating it. Hello, my name is Shannon, and I love, I adore, I highly esteem, I less-than-three carbs and gluten. Don’t tell our naturopath. 

 
Baking bread used to be so intimidating to me. Silly, hmm? It was unfamiliar territory and seemed like a big process. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to tackle it.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

– Philippians 4:6

So tackle it I did, and then got a little braver. I learned to play.

 

 

 
I learned to make new things, and discovered the love of stretching strips of pizza dough over calzone filling, rolling long thin triangles into crescent rolls, and layering other strips of dough together with a ridiculous amount of cinnamon sugar in between. Nothing fancy, just comfort food…but I’m harboring a longing to try homemade hotdog buns soon. We’ll see.

 
Recently we learned to make doughnuts, and I loved cutting out floury circles, and – the best part – little floury doughnut holes. Oh, joy! Oh, bliss!
 
Oh, dentist!

Just kidding. No cavities so far.
 

 

 

 
Playing is messy but so necessary. We need it from the earliest of ages. When we are little and don’t have enough play and touch and interaction, many things that should just be routine are anxiety-provoking, unfamiliar territory.

Fear comes into play. Literally. 

We learned a little – just a tiny bit – about this during some adoption trainings. We’ve learned quite a bit more, as usually happens, through actual experience. 

Our first experience was during our first trip to Spaghettia in March of last year. We gave Reagan some playdoh – all kids like play-doh, right? – and when she squeezed it, she cried. She was scared of it. 

We thought, Hmm, that’s weird, and found different toys to play with. 

We’ve been home together for almost a year now, and we’re learning more and more. It’s tricky; there don’t seem to be any hard and fast rules about sensory issues. Not all symptoms or characteristics may be present. A child can be both hypersensitive and hyposensitive. And – I just love this – “Inconsistency is a hallmark of every neurological dysfunction.” 

Well. Thanks so much. That’s just great.

 
Anyway, we’re doing lots of play. So many things are new and intimidating, and we focus on making new things familiar so they lose their fear. Messy play, creative play, textures, temperatures, movement, sound…sensory play. Of course, we never called it that before. We just called it…play. The only difference is that we don’t take it for granted anymore.
 

 

 

…My object is to show that the chief function of a child – his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life – is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses; that he has an insatiable appetite for knowledge got in this way; and that, therefore, the endeavor of his parents should be to put him in the way of making acquaintance freely with Nature and natural objects.

– Charlotte Mason, Home Education

She loves playdoh now. And not just for eating.
(Kidding. She’s only eaten it twice…I think…) 

 
Tonight after bedtime, Chamberlain came downstairs with a splinter in her fingertip that, while certainly painful, somehow magically did not become so until after we tucked her in. Vince and I took turns poking with the tweezers amid her shrieks and tears, but to no avail…we can’t pinch the splinter out, the tweezers can’t grasp it, and it’s unavoidable…the dreaded implement must be used.
 
You know the one. 

The fearsome sewing needle. (gasp!) 

Say it ain’t so! 

Actually, I’m not saying it at all. I’m handing her a stuffed doggie that happens to be within arm’s reach and what I do find myself saying is, “I think Pup has a splinter, too. How about you check him with the tweezers -” putting those useless things into her right hand, “while I look at your splinter a little more?” 

It was a stroke of divine genius that didn’t come from me at all. And it worked. 

She is engrossed in Pup’s right paw while I am holding her left paw and poking it with the needle. She has no idea I’m even holding a needle. She hardly notices that I have exposed the end of the splinter and she is jabbering to Pup about how he must be more careful in the woods around the rosebushes… 

I ask her if we can trade. She looks at me with surprise and hands me the tweezers and takes the needle that she didn’t even know I had and continues Pup’s surgery. One more pinch on her rosy fingertip and the tweezers grasp the splinter…and it’s out. 

We look at it together. Out in the open, it’s just a tiny little thing.

Cham toddles back to bed. I toddle back to the kitchen, thinking about what just happened…and He tells me: 

You are the one holding Pup. 

I almost dropped the tweezers. What?
He explains. He says that as we learn about these kids…all six of them…and we look for their owies that need healed and the things they need to learn, and we kiss them and cry over them and are engrossed in their need for restoration and growth…He is holding the needle. He is working on us. 

 
There are owies and impurities inside me, and He is calmly, carefully, quietly pulling them out as I jabber on and on to Him about the pups that I’m holding. Things that used to intimidate me are almost normal now, and I don’t even cry over other things that used to scare me, and I’ve hardly noticed because my attention has been focused on these pups.

As we teach and comfort our kids, He is pulling fears out – these little bitty things that cause so much pain – and brings them out to the open so we can look at it together.

He sends us toddling off, free, showing us new ways to play so we can be anxious for nothing…because He loves to watch us rise.